For less than people in rich countries now spend on a designer product that produces no tangible health gains, we would roll back one of the main causes of preventable childhood death. And for every US$1 invested, another US$3 to US$4 would be generated through savings on health spending and increased productivity. So why have rich countries been cutting aid to water and sanitation for the last five years?
Water is not just a commodity. It is a source of life, dignity and equality of opportunity. That is why human need, regardless of ability to pay, must be the guiding regulatory principle, and why governments bear ultimate responsibility for provision.
South Africa has shown the way by requiring all providers, public and private, to supply a minimum amount of water free of charge. In Senegal and Manila too, new partnerships are extending access for the poor through small surcharges on the wealthy.
Redistribution may be out of fashion, but converting public water subsidies for the rich into public investments for the poor accelerates progress and overcomes the glaring equity gaps that scar many countries.
In Britain, the water and sanitation crisis of the 19th century gave rise to powerful political coalitions that brought together municipalities, industrialists and social reformers. Civic duty, economic self-interest and morality combined to make water and sanitation a national cause.
Today, new social movements and partnerships between governments and civil society are beginning to make inroads into the crisis. But we also need global leadership in rich countries that pushes water and sanitation higher up the aid agenda.
Perhaps in Britain we should take fewer baths and be sparing in our use of hosepipes. But none of us should tolerate a world in which over 1 million children are, in a perversely literal sense, dying for a glass of water and a toilet.
Kevin Watkins is director of the UN Human Development Report Office.
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